This invention generally relates to methods and systems that generate information associated with geographic locations, targeted content delivery, targeted search results, navigation systems, mobile conversion tracking, and location based services on mobile devices. More specifically, this invention relates to methods and systems for processing and reporting mobile location data in order to provide targeted content, conversion tracking, and other information and services to businesses and users of mobile devices. To shorten and simplify the description of the invention, see references 1 through 16 and 36 through 40 below, herein incorporated by reference in their entirety.
There is significant benefit provided by methods and systems that provide an improved targeted advertising system that is able to deliver content to a mobile audience that may subsequently conveniently visit the advertiser's business. The methods and systems also provide feedback to advertisers including conversion tracking of mobile advertisements that result in sales at their retail locations. Furthermore, significant benefit is also provided by methods and systems of paying via mobile phones that are coupled to mobile advertisement systems, and systems that track conversions.
There is significant benefit provided by methods and systems that provide a better display of content on a mobile device that exploits the form factor and features of the mobile device. Current targeted content efforts have not taken advantage of all the features mobile devices have to offer. To shorten and simplify the description of the invention, see reference 5 below, herein incorporated by reference in its entirety.
There is significant benefit provided by methods and systems that provide search results and targeted content based upon the current course of the user instead of simply the radial distance from the user. There is also significant benefit provided by methods and systems that provide up-to-date cartographic information. For purposes of illustration and without limitation, when a car is traveling north there may be a gas station one mile south but it is better to remain on course and visit a different gas station three miles ahead of the current location and along the desired route.
Significant benefit is provided by a content targeting methods and systems usable with mobile devices that not only search for results closest to the current location of the mobile device, but also take into account other information in order to provide more useful results for the user. The methods and systems analyze current or historical locations, speeds, headings of the mobile device, or combinations thereof, as recorded by the device, by a remote system, or both, and deliver search result information, including content from advertisers interested in targeting consumers in the areas the consumer typically travels. Thus, in one application, if a consumer usually travels along a given route to and from work, where a specific advertiser owns a business, it would be desirable if the content produced by the advertiser would be more likely to reach the consumer than another consumer that never passes by any business locations of the advertiser. In another application, targeted content for businesses on the right hand side of the road may have preference over targeted content on the left hand side of the road in the United States since it may be easier to make a right hand turn than a left hand turn. If the content is something that the targeted consumer is interested in, they are more likely to respond to the content and visit the business location of the advertiser because it is convenient for them to stop at the business location, based on the flow of automobile traffic. In forms of the invention with integrated navigation features, the current or any historical route may be used to provide results for businesses that are easily accessible from the current route or other likely routes. Furthermore, the types of businesses along the route that the mobile device is currently on or usually takes, the types of businesses that the mobile device appears to visit based on past location and other data, the types of targeted content that the device has responded to, preferences and favored keywords of the user, historical search queries from the mobile device or another associated device or account on a remote system, reminder flags set from the mobile device or another associated device or account on a remote system, and preferences of advertisers may also be used to more effectively target content for mobile devices. To shorten and simplify the description of the invention, see references 1, 2, and 17 through 35 below, herein incorporated by reference in their entirety.
Significant benefit is provided by a content targeting methods and systems usable with mobile devices that provide feedback to the advertisers—especially those advertisers that have brick and mortar businesses—to help them judge the effectiveness of their targeted content. The effectiveness of a business' advertising effort may be measured by determining with regard to a user of a device that has received targeted content one or more of: whether the user visits a business location of a content producer after their content has been delivered to the device; the time spent at the location; and, how much money was spent at the business by that user (especially in the case where the user pays through an online payment service utilizing the mobile device).
There is significant benefit provided by methods and systems that facilitate sharing of location information with friends, family, acquaintances, and the general public. These methods and systems may provide personal information or may anonomyze the data depending on privacy settings and the particular application. These methods and systems help a user of the system locate friends and family members and provide up-to-date information about the popularity or business of business locations. To shorten and simplify the description of the invention, see reference 50 below, herein incorporated by reference in its entirety.
There is significant benefit provided by improved GPS functionality in these devices in order to better provide location based services and to enable reliable location based services indoors. The methods and systems incorporate Bluetooth®, Near Field Radios such as RFID, Wi-Fi, WiMax, 700 MHz Radios, GPS, or combinations thereof. The methods and systems may incorporate more accurate GPS chipsets such as the SIRF Star III or even more accurate GPS chipsets, A-GPS, cell tower triangulation, terrestrial FM or TV signals, altimeters, pressure sensors, or a combination thereof in addition to other location determination and sensing technologies in conjunction with one another. To further improve the accuracy, filtering techniques may be employed (e.g., a Kalman filter, etc.). To shorten and simplify the description of the invention, see references 41 through 64 below, herein incorporated by reference in their entirety.
Significant benefit is provided by methods and systems that report more accurate addresses, business names, and other information that corresponds to the location reported by mobile devices. Current location based services simply show a pinpoint on a map or an approximate street address that does not correspond to the actual location inside of a business location. Street addresses typically correspond to locations along the road while the location information from the cellular phone usually indicates a location set back from the road representing the user's actual location inside of a business location. Other reasons why street address information may be inaccurate is that the geocoding algorithms that calculate the street address are incorrect at times, or they cannot account for all of the variations that must occur in the addressing scheme to account for various city layouts. To shorten and simplify the description of the invention, refer to references 17 through 28 below, herein incorporated by reference in their entirety.
Significant benefit is provided by navigation software that not only takes into account current traffic conditions in providing routes, but methods and systems that are able to determine how many people are taking any given route and orchestrate traffic by distributing travelers judiciously across all available streets to avoid congestion on the most well known paths. The methods and systems provide traffic information enabling users to avoid traffic congestion. To shorten and simplify the description of the invention, refer to references 17 through 28, 65 through 69, and 131 below, herein incorporated by reference in their entirety.
Significant benefit is provided by an incentive system to entice consumers to go out of their way to visit the business location of an advertiser. The methods and systems provide digital coupon delivery usable with mobile devices. When the advertising system sends a targeted advertisement to a consumer, it may be beneficial to provide an incentive in the form of a coupon or discount valid at the advertiser's place of business. The type or value of the discount may be tied to the amount of effort that is required by the consumer to visit the advertiser's business from the current course of travel. The incentive may additionally or alternatively be subject to other conditions imposed by the advertising system or the advertiser.
There is significant benefit provided by methods and systems that entice users to visit business locations where there is relatively little effort on the part of the customer or the business to implement the incentive mechanism. The methods and systems may assign a value to the coupon related to the effort that would be required for the potential customer to get to the store from their current location and route. Furthermore, the methods and systems may automatically apply the coupon to the purchase price or they may provide a simple mechanism for application of the coupon. To shorten and simplify the description of the invention, see references 39, 40, and 130 below, herein incorporated by reference in their entirety.
Significant benefit is provided by advertising methods and systems that include one or more of: an interface for advertisers to produce or input their targeted content into an advertising system, a database that contains business locations and optionally other information such as phone numbers and business classifications, a secure database that contains tracking information for mobile devices and other user information, a search engine, a navigation or mapping system, and a software package with a suitable user interface for displaying location based targeted content on mobile devises. Using these and other elements as building blocks, any combination systems within the spirit of the invention may be put into place. To shorten and simplify the description of the invention, refer to references 69 through 83 below, herein incorporated by reference in their entirety.
Significant benefit is provided by methods and systems that encourage mobile device users to embrace the incredibly useful cell phone tracking features for their benefit. Despite the utility that this invention is provides, there is likely to be at least some resistance and reluctance to implement the invention due to what people perceive to be privacy concerns. Many people and organizations, such as the Electronic Freedom Foundation, are very reluctant to have their search habits, email, website viewing habits, and other personal information recorded while they browse the internet. This is true even if the information is not associated with any personal information. In order for increased privacy on the internet, some people even go as far as to disable very helpful and non-threatening features of web browsers such as cookies. Since many people are overly cautious of their internet location being known, they are even more resistant to their physical location known to a system that is able to analyze the data. Furthermore, there have been numerous recent court cases over the use of cell phone tracking. To shorten and simplify the description of the invention, see references 84 through 86 below, herein incorporated by reference in their entirety.
So as to reduce the complexity and length of the Detailed Specification, and to fully establish the state of the art in certain areas of technology, Applicant herein expressly incorporates by reference all of the following materials identified in each numbered paragraph below. The incorporated materials are not necessarily “prior art” and Applicant expressly reserves the right to swear behind any of the incorporated materials. Furthermore, the full text of non-patent literature incorporated by reference below may be included in the file wrapper of this application.    1. U.S. Publication Number 20060248062 entitled “Method and system for content search with mobile computing devices.”    2. U.S. Publication Number 20060242017 entitled “Method and system of bidding for advertisement placement on computing devices.”    3. U.S. Publication Number 20060190331 entitled “Delivering targeted advertising to mobile devices.”    4. U.S. Pat. No. 6,947,772 entitled “System and method for providing messages on a wireless device connecting to an application server.”    5. Web Document Manipulation for Small Screen Devices: A Review, Hassan Alam and Faud Rahman, BCL Technologies Inc.    6. Google Content-Targeted Advertising FAQ.    7. Behavioral Matchmaking, Part 3: GPS and Behavioral Targeting, By Andy Chen (Nov. 24, 2004)    8. Inside AdWords: A fireside chat on content targeting.    9. Schmidt: ‘Just at The Beginning of Targeted Ads’, By David Needle, internetnews.com.    10. Nokia Gets into Mobile Advertising, cellular-news.com.    11. The Big Bling: Targeted Advertising Will Take Off Thanks to Mobile Search.    12. Medio: Products: Mobile Advertising, medio.com.    13. Welcome to AdWords, Google.    14. Understanding Google's Conversion-Tracking Mechanism, Wednesday Jul. 13, 2005 9:50 AM, by Harold Davis, ONLamp.com.    15. Google AdWords, Regional and Local Targeting: Sharpen Your Advertising Focus.    16. Google AdWords Conversion Tracking Guide.    17. Google Maps adds real-time traffic data, by Daniel Terdiman, CNET News.com (Mar. 1, 2007).    18. Charleston Tour Guide: Developing and Evaluating a GPS-Enabled Mobile Device for Touring Charleston, Dr. Bing Pan, Office of Tourism Analysis Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management College of Charleston.    19. NexBus—Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.    20. Smarter Agent Privacy Policy.    21. Telematics—Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.    22. Vehicle Tracking System—Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.    23. ESITrack Products© 2005-2006 P T Elda Sarana Informatika.    24. Global Location Systems, Inc.    25. iTRAK GPS Vehicle Tracking System.    26. Snitch—Low Cost GPS Tracking.    27. About Sprint Family Locator.    28. Get the power of GPS-enabled Google Maps on your Helio Drift, Google Maps.    29. Algorithms and Data Structures: 4th International Workshop, Wads '95, Kingston, Canada, Aug. 16-18, 1995: Proceedings (Lecture Notes in Computer Science), by Selim G. Akl, Springer (December 1995).    30. Algorithms and Data Structures: 6th International Workshop, WADS'99 Vancouver, Canada, Aug. 11-14, 1999 Proceedings (Lecture Notes in Computer Science), by Frank Dehne, Springer; 1 edition (Aug. 27, 1999).    31. Algorithms in C, Parts 1-5 (Bundle): Fundamentals, Data Structures, Sorting, Searching, and Graph Algorithms (3rd Edition), by Robert Sedgewick, Addison-Wesley Professional; 3 edition (Aug. 31, 2001).    32. Data Mining In Time Series Databases (Series in Machine Perception and Artificial Intelligence), by Mark Last, World Scientific Pub Co Inc (November 2004).    33. Data Structures and Algorithms I: Sorting and Searching (Monographs in Theoretical Computer Science. An EATCS Series), by K. Mehlhorn, Springer; 1 edition (Sep. 15, 1987).    34. U.S. Publication Number 20060242129 entitled “Method and system for active ranking of browser search engine results.”    35. Web Information Systems—WISE 2004: 5th International Conference on Web Information Systems Engineering, Brisbane, Australia, Nov. 22-24, 2004, Proceedings, by Xiaofang Zhou, Springer; 1 edition (Dec. 22, 2004).    36. Electronic Payment Systems for E-Commerce, by Donal O'Mahony, Artech House Publishers; 2nd edition (Aug. 15, 2001).    37. Implementing Electronic Card Payment Systems, by Cristian Radu, Artech House Publishers (November 2002).    38. Payment Technologies for E-Commerce, by Weidong Kou, Springer; 1 edition (Aug. 9, 2006).    39. U.S. Pat. No. 6,505,046 entitled “Method and apparatus for distributing location-based messages in a wireless communication network.”    40. U.S. Pat. No. 6,968,180 entitled “Coupon methods and systems of use of coupons within a group communications system.”    41. Understanding GPS: Principles and Applications, Second Edition, by Elliott D. Kaplan, Artech House Publishers; 2nd edition (Nov. 30, 2005).    42. Global Positioning Systems, Inertial Navigation, and Integration, by Mohinder S. Grewal, Wiley-Interscience; 2 Har/Cdr edition (Jan. 22, 2007).    43. Fundamentals of Global Positioning System Receivers: A Software Approach, by James Bao-Yen Tsui, Wiley-Interscience; 1 edition (May 19, 2000).    44. Global Positioning System—Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia.    45. GPS Phone—Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia.    46. GPS Standard Positioning using Kalman filter, Yamaguchi, S.; Tanaka, T.; SICE-ICASE, 2006. International Joint Conference, October 2006 Page(s): 1351-1354.    47. GPS Tracking—Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia.    48. Assisted GPS: A Low-Infrastructure Approach, By Jimmy LaMance, Jani Jarvinen, Javier DeSalas, GPSWorld (Mar. 1, 2002).    49. Indoor GPS theory & implementation, van Diggelen, F.; Position Location and Navigation Symposium, 2002 IEEE, 15-18 Apr. 2002 Page(s): 240-247.    50. Automatic Position Reporting System—Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia.    51. Beidou navigation system—Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia.    52. Galileo Positioning System—Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia.    53. GLONASS—Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia.    54. GSM localization—Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia.    55. Indian Regional Navigational Satellite System—Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia.    56. Computing location from ambient FM radio signals [commercial radio station signals], Youssef, A.; Krumm, J.; Miller, E.; Cermak, G.; Horvitz, E.; Wireless Communications and Networking Conference, 2005 IEEE, Volume 2, 13-17 Mar. 2005 Page(s): 824-829 Vol. 2.    57. Multilateration—Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia.    58. Trilateration—Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia.    59. Naystar GPS and GLONASS: global satellite navigation systems, Daly, P.; Electronics & Communication Engineering Journal, Volume 5, Issue 6, December 1993 Page(s): 349-357.    60. Performance of Hybrid Positioning System Combining GPS and Television Signals, Ju-Yong Do; Rabinowitz, M.; Enge, P.; Position, Location, And Navigation Symposium, 2006 IEEE/ION, Apr. 25-27, 2006 Page(s): 556-564.    61. Accuracy Enhancement for UWB Indoor Positioning Using Ray Tracing, Yung-Hoon Jo; Joon-Yong Lee; Dong-Heon Ha; Shin-Hoo Kang; Position, Location, And Navigation Symposium, 2006 IEEE/ION, Apr. 25-27, 2006 Page(s): 565-568.    62. PMD Based Mobile Node Position Monitoring, Hasouneh, F.; Knedlik, S.; Peters, V.; Loffeld, O.; Position, Location, And Navigation Symposium, 2006 IEEE/ION, Apr. 25-27, 2006 Page(s): 569-573.    63. Performance of Hybrid Positioning System Combining GPS and Television Signals, Ju-Yong Do; Rabinowitz, M.; Enge, P.; Position, Location, And Navigation Symposium, 2006 IEEE/ION, Apr. 25-27, 2006 Page(s): 556-564.    64. Multilateration tracking and synchronization over wide areas, Yang, Y. E.; Baldwin, J.; Smith, A.; Radar Conference, 2002. Proceedings of the IEEE, 22-25 Apr. 2002 Page(s): 419-424.    65. A Prototype Personal Navigation System, Soehren, W.; Hawkinson, W.; Position, Location, And Navigation Symposium, 2006 IEEE/ION, Apr. 25-27, 2006 Page(s): 539-546.    66. An AutoPC for supporting in-vehicle navigation and location-based multimedia services, Chun-Hsin Wu; Ann-Tzung Cheng; Shao-Ting Lee; Jan-Ming Ho; Position Location and Navigation Symposium, 2002 IEEE, 15-18 Apr. 2002 Page(s): 226-232.    67. An AutoPC for supporting in-vehicle navigation and location-based multimedia services, Chun-Hsin Wu; Ann-Tzung Cheng; Shao-Ting Lee; Jan-Ming Ho; Position Location and Navigation Symposium, 2002 IEEE, 15-18 Apr. 2002 Page(s): 226-232.    68. WikiGPS—Meta. Retrieved from “http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiGPS”.    69. 2002 IEEE Position Location and Navigation Symposium (IEEE Cat. No. 02CH37284), Position Location and Navigation Symposium, 2002 IEEE, 15-18 Apr. 2002.    70. IEEE 1998 Position Location and Navigation Symposium (Cat. No. 98CH36153), Position Location and Navigation Symposium, IEEE 1998, 20-23 Apr. 1998.    71. IEEE 2000. Position Location and Navigation Symposium (Cat. No. 00CH37062), Position Location and Navigation Symposium, IEEE 2000, 13-16 Mar. 2000.    72. IEEE PLANS '88 Position Location and Navigation Symposium Record ‘Navigation into the 21st Century’ (IEEE Cat. No. 88CH2675-7) Position Location and Navigation Symposium, 1988. Record. ‘Navigation into the 21st Century’. IEEE PLANS '88., IEEE, 29 Nov.-2 Dec. 1988.    73. IEEE PLANS '90: Position Location and Navigation Symposium Record. ‘The 1990's—A Decade of Excellence in the Navigation Sciences’ (Cat. No. 90CH2811-8), Position Location and Navigation Symposium, 1990. Record. ‘The 1990's—A Decade of Excellence in the Navigation Sciences’. IEEE PLANS '90, IEEE, 20-23 Mar. 1990.    74. IEEE PLANS '92. Position Location and Navigation Symposium. Record. 500 Years After Columbus—Navigation Challenges of Tomorrow (Cat. No. 92CH3085-8), Position Location and Navigation Symposium, 1992. Record. ‘500 Years After Columbus—Navigation Challenges of Tomorrow’. IEEE PLANS '92., IEEE, 23-27 Mar. 1992.    75. Location- and Context-Awareness: First International Workshop, LoCA 2005, Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany, May 12-13, 2005, Proceedings, by Thomas Strang, Springer; 1 edition (Aug. 5, 2005).    76. Location- and Context-Awareness: Second International Workshop, LoCA 2006, Dublin, Ireland, May 10-11, 2006, Proceedings, by Mike Hazas, Springer; 1 edition (Jun. 14, 2006).    77. PLANS 2000 position location and navigation symposium, Schroer, R.; Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine, IEEE, Volume 16, Issue 3, March 2001 Page(s): 21-25.    78. PLANS 2004. Position Location and Navigation Symposium (IEEE Cat. No. 04CH37556), Position Location and Navigation Symposium, 2004. PLANS 2004, 26-29 Apr. 2004.    79. PLANS '94. Position, Location and Navigation Symposium '94, Oman, H.; Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine, IEEE, Volume 9, Issue 7, July 1994 Page(s): 2-5    80. Position, Location, and Navigation Symposium (PLANS), Schroer, R.; Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine, IEEE, Volume 19, Issue 2, February 2004 Page(s): 33-34.    81. Proceedings of 1994 IEEE Position, Location and Navigation Symposium—PLANS'94, Position Location and Navigation Symposium, 1994, IEEE, 11-15 Apr. 1994.    82. Proceedings of Position, Location and Navigation Symposium—PLANS '96, Position Location and Navigation Symposium, 1996, IEEE 1996, 22-26 Apr. 1996.    83. Table of Contents, Position, Location, And Navigation Symposium, 2006 IEEE/ION, Apr. 25-27, 2006 Page(s): i-xii.    84. Cell phone tracking—Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.    85. Cell phone tracking raises privacy issues, by Ben Charny, CNET News.com; Last Update (May 31, 2002).    86. EFF Cellphone Tracking Cases—USA v. Pen Register.     87. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/196,951 and U.S. Publication 20070032240 entitled “Realtime, interactive and geographically defined computerized personal matching methods and systems.”    88. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/513,515 and U.S. Publication 20070032225 entitled “Realtime, location-based cell phone enhancements, uses, and applications.”    89. Android Location Manager API, http://code.google.com/android/reference/android/location/LocationManager.html.    90. U.S. Provisional Patent Application 60/799,762 (Expired).    91. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/747,602 and U.S. Publication 20070264968 entitled “Location-based targeting.”    92. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/747,613.    93. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/747,618 and U.S. Publication 20070264974 entitled “Privacy control of location information.”    94. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/747,658 and U.S. Publication 20070264969 entitled “Location-based status checking.”    95. U.S. Pat. No. 6,675,017 entitled “Location blocking service for wireless networks”, to Samuel N. Zellner, Mark J. Enzmann, and Robert T. Moton, Jr.    96. U.S. Pat. No. 6,716,101 entitled “System and method for monitoring the location of individuals via the world wide web using a wireless communications network”, to Vemon Meadows and Michael S. Harper.    97. U.S. Pat. No. 6,738,808 entitled “Anonymous. location service for wireless networks”, to Samuel N. Zellner, Mark J. Enzmann, and Robert T. Moton, Jr.    98. U.S. Pat. No. 6,799,049 entitled “System and method for tracking movement of a wireless device”, to Samuel N. Zellner, Mark J. Enzmann, and Robert T. Moton, Jr.    99. U.S. Publication Number 20020077083 entitled “Identity blocking service from a wireless service provider”, of Samuel N. Zellner, Mark J. Enzmann, and Robert T. Moton, Jr.    100. U.S. Publication Number 20020077118 entitled “Location blocking service from a wireless service provider”, of Samuel N. Zellner, Mark J. Enzmann, and Moton, Robert T. Moton, Jr.    101. U.S. Publication Number 20040205198 entitled “Anonymous. location service for wireless networks”, of Samuel N. Zellner, Mark J. Enzmann, and Robert T. Moton, Jr.    102. U.S. Publication Number 20060030335 entitled “Identity blocking service from a wireless service provider”, of Samuel N. Zellner, Mark J. Enzmann, and Robert T. Moton, Jr.    103. U.S. Publication Number 20060089134 entitled “System and method for using location information to execute an action”, of Robert 1. Moton, Jr., Mark J. Enzmann, and Samuel N. Zellner.    104. U.S. Publication Number 20060094447 entitled “System and method for using location information to execute an action”, of Samuel N. Zellner.    105. U.S. Publication Number 20040097243 entitled “Location blocking service for wireless networks”, of Samuel N. Zellner, Mark J. Enzmann, and Robert 1. Moton, Jr.    106. U.S. Publication Number 20060099966 entitled “System and method for using location information to execute an action”, of Robert 1. Moton, Jr., Mark J. Enzmann, and Samuel N. Zellner.    107. “Location-Based Services” by Jochen Schiller and Agnes Voisard, which was published in 2004 and has ISBN Number: 1558609296.    108. “E-Commerce: Business, Technology, Society”, Second Edition, by Kenneth C. Laudon and Carol Guercio Traver, which was published in 2004 and has ISBN Number: 0321269373.    109. ‘WWW.Advertising: Advertising and Marketing on the World Wide Web” by Richard Adams, which was published in 2003 and has ISBN Number: 0823058611.    110. SurfStats—What is Conversion Tracking?    111. U.S. Publication Number 20070088603 entitled “Method and system for targeted data delivery using weight-based scoring.”    112. U.S. Publication Number 20070192168 entitled “Map and Inventory-Based On-Line Purchases.”    113. U.S. Publication Number 20060249576 entitled “Methods and systems for providing near real-time collection and reporting of data to third parties at remote locations.”    114. U.S. Publication Number 20080005313 entitled “USING OFFLINE ACTIVITY TO ENHANCE ONLINE SEARCHING.”    115. U.S. Publication Number 20080004990 entitled “VIRTUAL SPOT MARKET FOR ADVERTISEMENTS.”    116. U.S. Publication Number 20080004948 entitled “AUCTIONING FOR VIDEO AND AUDIO ADVERTISING.”    117. U.S. Publication Number 20080004884 entitled “EMPLOYMENT OF OFFLINE BEHAVIOR TO DISPLAY ONLINE CONTENT.”    118. U.S. Publication Number 20070273558 entitled “DYNAMIC MAP RENDERING AS A FUNCTION OF A USER PARAMETER.”    119. U.S. Publication Number 20070210937 entitled “DYNAMIC RENDERING OF MAP INFORMATION.”    120. U.S. Publication Number 20070073477 entitled “METHODS FOR PREDICTING DESTINATIONS FROM PARTIAL TRAJECTORIES EMPLOYING OPEN- AND CLOSED-WORLD MODELING METHODS.”    121. U.S. Publication Number 20070024580 entitled “Interactive display device, such as in context-aware environments.”    122. U.S. Publication Number 20060282312 entitled “Advertisements in an alert interface.”    123. U.S. Publication Number 20060241860 entitled “Virtual earth mapping.”    124. U.S. Publication Number 20060241859 entitled “Virtual earth real-time advertising.”    125. U.S. Publication Number 20060238383 entitled “Virtual earth rooftop overlay and bounding.”    126. U.S. Publication Number 20060238382 entitled “Real-time virtual earth driving information.”    127. U.S. Publication Number 20060238381 entitled “Virtual earth community based recommendations.”    128. U.S. Publication Number 20060238380 entitled “Maintaining user privacy in a virtual earth environment.”    129. U.S. Publication Number 20060238379 entitled “Obtaining and displaying virtual earth images.”    130. The Business Journal of Phoenix, Going mobile: Marketing trend puts instant Gratification (Jun. 4, 2007).    131. CNET News.com, Nokia turns people into traffic sensors (Feb. 8, 2008).    132. Facebook Social Ads (Feb. 9, 2008).    133. Nokia Maps 2.0 hits beta (Feb. 9, 2008).    134. Sprint Conducting NFC Based Phone Payment Trial in Bay Area (Jan. 30, 2008).    135. CSR eGPS: Combined GPS/cellular data creates universal positioning Data, CSR (Feb. 10, 2008).    136. CSR eGPS: Positioning technology that always works, CSR (Feb. 10, 2008).    137. CSR eGPS: What users want, where they want it, CSR (Feb. 10, 2008).    138. TUAW Responds: iPhone LoJack (Feb. 21, 2008).    139. How Google Earth Ate our Town, TIME (Mar. 10, 2008).
Applicant believes that the material incorporated above is “non-essential” in accordance with 37 CFR 1.57, because it is referred to for purposes of indicating the background of the invention or illustrating the state of the art. However, if the Examiner believes that any of the above-incorporated material constitutes “essential material” within the meaning of 37 CFR 1.57(c)(1)-(3), applicant will amend the specification to expressly recite the essential material that is incorporated by reference as allowed by the applicable rules.